Re: [PATCH v7 1/7] exec: Change uselib(2) IS_SREG() failure to EACCES

Eric W. Biederman
2020-08-11T19:18:22Z

ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman) writes:

> Mickaël Salaün <mic@digikod.net> writes:
>
>> From: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
>>
>> Change uselib(2)' S_ISREG() error return to EACCES instead of EINVAL so
>> the behavior matches execve(2), and the seemingly documented value.
>> The "not a regular file" failure mode of execve(2) is explicitly
>> documented[1], but it is not mentioned in uselib(2)[2] which does,
>> however, say that open(2) and mmap(2) errors may apply. The documentation
>> for open(2) does not include a "not a regular file" error[3], but mmap(2)
>> does[4], and it is EACCES.
>
> Do you have enough visibility into uselib to be certain this will change
> will not cause regressions?
>
> My sense of uselib is that it would be easier to remove the system call
> entirely (I think it's last use was in libc5) than to validate that a
> change like this won't cause problems for the users of uselib.
>
> For the kernel what is important are real world users and the manpages
> are only important as far as they suggest what the real world users
> do.

Hmm.

My apologies. After reading the next patch I see that what really makes
this safe is: 73601ea5b7b1 ("fs/open.c: allow opening only regular files
during execve()").

As in practice this change has already been made and uselib simply
can not reach the !S_ISREG test.

It might make sense to drop this patch or include that reference
in the next posting of this patch.

Eric